John Schettler - Fallen Angels - 9 Days Falling, Volume II

Hitchcock was warned of the incoming missiles by his ALR-94 radar. The Chinese Missiles were climbing up for him, aiming at a point in the sky they calculated the Raptor might be in a few seconds time, but Hitchcock made sure his plane wasn’t there. The Raptor was capable of some very extreme supermaneuvers, with thrust vectoring and attitude control well beyond normal aerodynamic limits of most aircraft. The PL-12s would not find him that day. With four of the six J-20s down and no situational awareness of where the enemy was, the rest of the J-12s wanted no part of the action. They were trained as fighter bomber pilots, with very limited air-to-air combat training, so they turned and broke for the coast at high speed.

The last J-20 was stubborn that day. The plane was close enough to see Hitchcock’s Raptor visually and thought it would tip its nose up and get off a missile shot. Wild Bill would have nothing of that. He executed a Herbst maneuver decelerating rapidly as he increased his angle of attack to a stall, utilized his thrust vectoring engines to maintain control, coned over to a new flight direction that pointed his nose right at the enemy plane. Then he poured on the power. The Chinese pilot could not maintain his lock, and in that brief interval Hitchcock fired a Sidewinder that went hissing out after the enemy.

Wild Bill was two for two, and the B-2s slipped quietly through the contrail torn skies en route to their launch position. Then their bellies opened to send the X-51Cs roaring to the attack, accelerating through Mach 4 and beyond Mach 6 in a matter of minutes. The WaveRiders were on their way.

Three bombers fired six missiles that would take out the satellite control center a few miles southeast of Ningwu, the telemetry station north of Wuhai, the technical center where long lines of men sat in pale blue uniforms and caps as they attended to their monitors, and finally the launch pad facilities themselves. The second triad would target the launch control headquarters at Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. In each group, one plane was held in reserve, leaving four missiles available for any target of opportunity.

The strike went off without a hitch, with all four missiles from the lead bombers finding their targets. This left the two reserve planes free to penetrate a little further and go for the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, or Base 27. The Raptors hung around long enough to be certain there were no further threats to the big bombers, even after the B-2s had crossed into Chinese airspace. They remained undetected until they delivered their high tech package and turned for home. When they were done, the People’s Republic of China had lost, its ability to put a satellite in orbit in one fell stroke.

They were not happy about it.

Within hours orders went out on a very secure channel to a submarine that had been hovering silently off the West coast of the United States. The message they would deliver by return mail would have dramatic implications and tip the world just one step closer to the mayhem and destruction of all out nuclear war.

Robert passed a restless night in the Quantum Sleeper , and spent all the next day haggling with his broker to see if he could salvage anything from the collapse of Goldman the previous day. By sunset he had given up his mind returning again to that list he had been working on. The news had been bad, and something told him it was going to get worse very soon. The TV kept on with the latest updates on the missile strikes against the Chinese mainland. The more he listened, the more he felt the compelling urge to lay in some supplies before the store shelves were stripped completely bare. Finally he started to move, and he was heading down the stairs when it happened.

The lights winked in their recessed overhead spot wells, and then went out. The ongoing babble of the TV where he had been watching the breaking news went silent. The screen was suddenly phosphor TV black. He reached for his iPad, realizing the Internet was down as well. Ten seconds passed…a minute… It was the strangest feeling in the world—no power. No lights, camera, action. No TV and radio. No Internet.

Food and Gasoline….That was the ticket now. That and the hundred items list he had started working on last night, the ones to disappear first from store shelves in a time of grave national crisis. He went to the window and looked out to see if he could see any signs of other folks in the neighborhood with electricity, but all was dark and quiet in the early morn.

He had been through power failures before, but something about this one, coming as it did on the heels of that morning news feed, gave him the shivers. He decided to send an email to his buddy Aaron. If the cell system was still up he might get it. He’d make it short, just a quick text message: WTF?

But the message never got through because his phone was dead. That was odd, he thought. I charged the damn thing just last night in the Quantum Sleeper . I still have near 100% battery now.

The minutes passed and the sweat on his brow was challenging that stay fresh feeling he was supposed to have all day from his shower. Liz was already yapping at him to call PG&E and see how long it would be before they had the power up. His cell phone was wacky, so he reached for the land line, surprised to find that it was also dead.

Power down, phones dead, Internet gone, no TV. The advertizing had finally stopped. In effect, the entire substance of his life was now toggled OFF. He couldn’t even play his Yamaha keyboard for musical distraction because he upgraded last year and this model didn’t run on batteries.

Holy Freakin’ Dodge!

Robert grabbed his car keys and was out the front door in a flash. “Be back soon!” he yelled to Liz, seeing she was using the power failure to abandon the morning laundry and head out to the swimming pool to lounge about.

Yet lounging about was the last thing on Robert’s mind just then. His worries about his stock in Goldman had vanished; his fretting over the mortgage and credit cards was up in smoke. Now all he cared about was getting to an ATM and pulling out as much cash as he possibly could get his hands on. But the power was down…If this was more than a local outage then how would the ATMs work? If he went in to see a teller how would they call up his account info? How would they even cash a check?

Something told him that the banks were going to be closed anyway. So, as he slipped into the front seat of his Lexus he had already changed his mind and determined to head for the nearest supermarket for food. They had ATMs there too. Yes…Food and water was top of the list now. That was the smart play. Food and water would keep the Quantum Sleeper functioning as a safe bedroom bunker, and they could go easy on the battery and stretch it out as long as possible—stretch that 8 hour emergency battery life into eight days if they just powered on for an hour a day.

There was no way he could think beyond that. Eight days without electricity was more desolation and denial than he had ever experienced in his life, because he lived in that lucky 50% of the planet that was plugged into the grid. It had taken humanity millions of years to reach that dubious statistic, when 50% of earth’s population had achieved access to electricity in the year 2005 and Robert was going to find out just how the other half of the planet was living in short order.

He put the key into the ignition went to start his mid-sized sedan—great mileage, always reliable; bought for nothing down and low easy payments after a song and dance at the bank.

Nothing happened. It was dead.

WTF?

Themeeting in the White House Situation Room was ready to adjourn. Leyman had the recommendation of both Admiral Ghortney and General Lane—follow up the successful B-2 strikes with the B-1s and then move in the carriers to restore order over Taiwan. They would take the fight to the enemy now.